


Scars

by CassandraStarflower



Series: Knights and Guardians [5]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, W.I.T.C.H.
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Scars, and therefore has all of her memories, but it'd be nice if you did, i tagged it major character death bc will absorbed the altermere, including being struck by the lightning, it's the poor Altermere, major character death is CANONICAL, no beta we die like will's altermere, rating is for discussion of death and injury, you don't need to read Shadows and Secrets to understand this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28535964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CassandraStarflower/pseuds/CassandraStarflower
Summary: Conversations about Will’s scars with Will and Cass. Set post-Shadows and Secrets, but no spoilers for the main fic. Just know that Cass and Will are on good terms.
Series: Knights and Guardians [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2010580
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> This includes a fair amount of my own headcanons, including several headcanons about scars and the Guardians. Also, I bring in a thing from the comics, Xin Jing’s Gift of Regeneration.   
> Italics are sign, italics in quotations are signing and speaking simultaneously.

It was all still kind of new. Being friends with her cousins and all.    
But having someone new to hang out with, someone who knew her secret, was nice. 

So Will didn’t mind hanging out with Cass while her mom was at work. Cass was in town because a mission had brought her here, and she’d decided to stick around for a bit. 

They’d been chatting for a while before the conversation turned to scars. 

Cass had shown Will a lot of her scars (along with the stories of the scars- mostly battle wounds from fights with supervillains and such, though she also told the story of trying to learn how to cook from Jason and burning her hand on the stove- it had scarred), and not for the first time Will was deeply relieved that the Guardian transformation got rid of most scars. 

_ “What about yours?” _ Cass signed and spoke simultaneously. Will was trying to learn sign language. 

“Um. The transformation kind of auto-heals most injuries, and most of my old scars, ya know, the ones from being a regular kid, have disappeared. Ms. Lin called it the Gift of Regeneration. Taranee barely needs glasses anymore.” Will tilted her head to the side and hesitated. “I do have some. They’re kinda gross…” 

_ “You’ve seen mine.”  _ Cass replied.  _ “I have gross ones too.” _

Will smiled and tugged her shirt off, revealing a massive scar on her side, wrapping around to her back. Cass leaned forward, looking alarmed. 

“Um, this one…” Will tapped a different scar, this one purple-black and centered on her back, visible around her bra. It rippled in a circle over her heart. “This one is from when we were dealing with the Seal of Phobos. It was hitting stuff with magic, and I got hit. I detransformed and the Heart sort of absorbed the Seal, but the scar was there the next time I looked. It hurt, too.” 

Cass nodded, eyes still fixed on the larger scar. 

“I have a little one right over my heart, and another little one up here, and I think they’re both from magic…?” Will tapped a spot on the right side of her chest. 

_ “And that one?” _ Cass pointed to the biggest scar. 

“Oh. Yeah.” Will rubbed it for a moment. “It’s not really my scar.” 

Cass cocked her head, managing to so clearly express confusion and curiosity that nearly anybody would have been able to read it. 

“Okay, so, like a year or so ago when Mrs. Rudolph was retired we were setting up a party for her? Because she was going back to Meridian with Elyon. It was the last day of school and a half day, and the girls and I were going to decorate the gym for the party in the afternoon, except my mom wanted me to do laundry.” 

Cass nodded, though she had never been to school and knew little about school traditions.

“So I, uh, decided I needed to help decorate  _ and _ do laundry, which meant I needed to be in two places at once, and, uh…” Will fidgeted with the T-shirt in her hands, trailing off. 

_ “Go on.” _

“I- there’s this thing that I can do with the Heart. Making Astral Drops. They’re like clones, sort of? They’re perfect physical replicas of a person. Except they don’t have any memories or powers and they’re not really  _ alive _ exactly.” 

Cass frowned a bit. She could see where this was going.

“So I made an Astral Drop to do laundry for me. It went pretty okay. I had the laundry machines come to life to help her do the laundry, and I went and decorated the gym, and it was fine until I went to get the Astral Drop and she was gone.” 

Cass made the face she used when her various family members (usually Tim or Bruce) had done something particularly stupid. Will winced, looking chagrined. 

“I found her in the park. She, uh, didn’t get reabsorbed into the Heart when I tried, and then she lashed out… with lightning.” 

“Oh.” Cass said, eyes widening. 

“Yeah. I went looking everywhere, and she ended up at the party. I kept looking for her, and roped the rest of the girls and Caleb into it, and eventually we found her outside. It turned out that… a person we were fighting at the time… had found her and basically made her alive. Made her into an Altermere, a perfect replica of me down to the memories and powers. We fought a bit, but figured it out.” 

That was good. Cass braced herself for the bad. 

“And then the, uh, bad guy shot lightning at me, trying to kill me, and she took the blow for me.” Will rubbed her scar, mouth pressing into a thin line. “All she wanted was to live, and she…” 

Cass reached out and grabbed her cousin’s hand, feeling deeply sympathetic. 

Will took a deep breath and continued. “I ended up absorbing her into myself, so she would… keep living, through me, sort of. I got all the memories she formed during her time alive, and I got… this.” She gestured at the scar again, frowning. “And I remember… I remember what it  _ felt like _ for her. It’s…” She trailed off, still frowning. 

Cass frowned back as Will pulled her shirt back on. 

What would Dick do? 

Well, probably hug her. Cass decided that that was a fair course of action and did. Will hugged back, smiling slightly, and then Cass poked her in the ribs. 

It devolved into a bit of a play fight after that. 

(Never have a play fight with a vigilante. Superhuman reflexes or no, you will lose.)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope people like this story!   
> Come find me on tumblr @cassandra-starflower!


End file.
